30 August 2006
Matt wants to record Broken Bones, the traditional just-piano-and-voice song by doing the piano and the voice together. This will mean that he not only has to sing it right, he also has to play it right at the same time. You'd think that would be easy, wouldn't you. After all, he's a professional play-the-piano-and-sing man. It's what he do. But, as usual, it's a different thing to write a song than perform it. Your body has to learn how to arrange itself so that your voice and your fingers can do everything they need to do.
Eventually you do get used to it. I should think if Matt started playing Strange and Beautiful on the piano he would be unable to stop himself from singing it, so powerful is the programming. Really everyone should make their albums once really quickly, then do it again properly after they've learnt to play everything. Or perhaps some people do lots of practising before they start recording. Fools!
Despite the increased pressure generating some unhelpful hilarity, and the lack of click-track Patronising glossary generating some super-fast versions, Matt does four or five takes without putting his hands in the wrong place, and we presume that we have it, give or take a bit of editing.
Now, since we're all pumped up, we decide to return to Outside and give it one last go, just a few takes, no pressure. Now that we'd picked through everything, Matt could concentrate on singing, and so after three goes it sounds a lot like we've got it. At long last. Matt comps it and then he and I add some backing vocals. It's weird how backing vocals make things sound finished.
